Fights to recover funds paid for stolen Walk.com domain name — National A-1

Firm blames domain name registrar that received proceeds of transaction in its bank account.

National A-1, a sizable buyer of premium domain names, is fighting in court to recover $35,000 it paid to buy the Walk.com domain name. Following it paid for the domain name it found out the name was stolen.

As stated by National A-1’s complaint, it was contacted by the supposed owner of the domain name in April of this year. It struck a deal to purchase the domain for $35,000 and used Escrow.com to handle the transaction.

Following the domain was transferred and the funds released, the “real” owner of the domain contacted National A-1 and informed it that the domain had been stolen.

Walk.com’s owner stated the domain was hijacked out of his GoDaddy account and transferred to an account at Melbourne IT, where it was subsequently transferred to National A-1.

National A-1 later found out that the account that received the funds from Escrow.com was registered in the name of OnlineNIC, a domain registrar that has faced heavyweight cybersquatting battles from Microsoft and Verizon.

For its part, OnlineNIC states that an “unknown perpetrator” caused the money to be transferred to OnlineNIC’s account.

This case will be interesting to watch.